Related papers: Autonomous Restructuring of Asteroids into Rotatin…
We demonstrate the realization of large, fully loaded, arbitrarily-shaped three-dimensional arrays of single atoms. Using holographic methods and real-time, atom-by-atom, plane-by-plane assembly, we engineer atomic structures with up to 72…
We study the orbital architecture of multi-planet systems detected by the Kepler transit mission using N-body simulations, focusing on the orbital spacing between adjacent planets in systems showing four or more transiting planets. We find…
This paper presents a novel methodology to control spacecraft swarms about singleasteroids with arbitrary gravitational potential coefficients. This approach enablesthe use of small, autonomous swarm spacecraft in conjunction with a…
Rapid rotation in field red giant stars is a relatively rare but well-studied phenomenon; here we investigate the potential role of planet accretion in spinning up these stars. Using Zahn's theory of tidal friction and stellar evolution…
Gaia Data Release 3 contains accurate photometric observations of more than 150,000 asteroids covering a time interval of 34 months. With a total of about 3,000,000 measurements, a typical number of observations per asteroid ranges from a…
Excavation plans are crucial in construction projects, dictating the dirt disposal strategy and excavation sequence based on the final geometry and machinery available. While most construction processes rely heavily on coarse sequence…
In this work we present the concept of guided self-replicating factory (GSFR). This factory would be established as a colony on the Moon, Mercury, Mars, or Asteroid Belt. GSFR would grow by using in situ materials in order to manufacture…
Deflecting an asteroid from an Earth impact trajectory requires only small velocity changes, typically of the order of microns per second, if done many years ahead of time. For this, a highly precise method of determining the need,…
A robot modeled as a deterministic finite automaton has to build a structure from material available to it. The robot navigates in the infinite oriented grid $\mathbb{Z} \times \mathbb{Z}$. Some cells of the grid are full (contain a brick)…
A robot's mechanical parts routinely wear out from normal functioning and can be lost to injury. For autonomous robots operating in isolated or hostile environments, repair from a human operator is often not possible. Thus, much work has…
We will discuss some specific applications to the rotation state and the shapes of moderately large asteroids, and techniques of observations putting some emphasis on the HST/FGS instrument.
A class of asteroids, called large super-fast rotators (large SFRs), have rotation periods shorter than 2 hours and diameters larger than ~ 0.3 km. They pose challenges to the usual interior rubble-pile structure unless a relatively high…
Most asteroids with a diameter larger than $\sim 300 \ {\rm m}$ are rubble piles i.e. consisting of more than one solid object. All asteroids are rotating but almost all asteroids larger than $\sim 300 \ {\rm m}$ rotate with a period longer…
This paper studies the problem of controlling a multi-robot system to achieve a polygon formation in a self-organized manner. Different from the typical formation control strategies where robots are steered to satisfy the predefined control…
Modular Aerial Robotic Systems (MARS) consist of multiple drone units assembled into a single, integrated rigid flying platform. With inherent redundancy, MARS can self-reconfigure into different configurations to mitigate rotor or unit…
Robots will bring search and rescue (SaR) in disaster response to another level, in case they can autonomously take over dangerous SaR tasks from humans. A main challenge for autonomous SaR robots is to safely navigate in cluttered…
We present a review of the problem of asteroid shape and spin reconstruction from generalised projections; i.e., from lightcurves, disk-resolved images, occultation silhouettes, radar range-Doppler data, and interferometry. The aim of this…
The orbital parameters of the observed extrasolar planets differ strongly from those of our own solar system. The differences include planets with high masses, small semi-major axis and large eccentricities. We performed numerical…
The terrestrial planets formed by accretion of asteroid-like objects within the inner solar system's protoplanetary disk. Previous works have found that forming a small-mass Mars requires the disk to contain little mass beyond ~1.5 au…
Many remarkably robust, rapid and spontaneous self-assembly phenomena in nature can be modeled geometrically starting from a collection of rigid bunches of spheres. This paper highlights the role of symmetry in sphere-based assembly…